Is it a motorboat? I’ve never been on it!!
I took a nap this evening, and as brief as it was, I heard something that gave me jitters. Someone’s voice echoed, which made me jump off the bed to think about the entire day’s mesmerizations all at once.
The voice said,
She explains well but doesn’t have adequate knowledge.
For someone who has based her foundation as a doctor on learning every day or at least thinking about my subject’s theory while not reading often about it in the recent situation but solving problems based on it, I was just forced to think about whether the voice had some authenticity.
That led me to hang on for a while and auto-suggest to myself that it was my insecurity in the midst of a dirty competition of unprepared masses of people around me.
I do not intend a conquest, do I?
I teach public health and am well abreast with its vocabulary.
But this afternoon the idea of adenocarcinomas being treated with vitamin K2, K1, or K5 took me to 2005, when I remembered about neovascularization in tumor cells. Quickly I caught my phone and found that fat droplets inside cells are responsible for this, and then I started thinking if Daunorubicin stops this process, and really strikingly, the text in English said that Daunorubicin stops vascular mimicry and prevents cancer cells from growing and metastasizing with adjuvants like dioscin. Now that was thoughtful because I remembered the words “neovascularization” and “daunorubicin” but not “vascular mimicry” or “stem cells,” and not “cancer stem cells” or “CSCs.”
I am not an oncologist.
I don’t know if my situation with knowledge is well-explained.
I was bound to think about what I lack due to this voice that brought my heart out. I take such comments sincerely and seriously.
Is it that my intelligence is low? Or that this voice meant that others are super smart at everything?
Is it better to use the word “cancer remission” or “prophylactic daunorubicin to stop metastasis?”
With such mindset I decided to take a nap and got up astonished, with a need for a solution which was to be done with my theoretical mind.
People often think I have less knowledge because I don’t give them the points or a list of things to remember.
I teach them like an old Eastern European professor, who can explain every point and gives lots of examples to support it, leaving the points to be memorized by the students at their own pace when they sit to revise for the day and ask questions during working hours if there is something that they do not understand.
I think that this type of teaching makes me appear as a fool. I have to deliver my lecture in such a manner that the student learns the topic then and there.
Something similar I faced back in 2004 while learning pharmacology. My friend’s teacher gave him only the points to remember during classes, which helped him score as much as me. I never saw him struggle with the subject. I thought then that he had a background with drugs because he had worked with his uncles already, as they were pharmacists.
As for me, I read the pathology behind each drug, the cause of side effects, the mechanism of their actions in detail, pharmacokinetics, dosage, and interactions with other substances, including food. I wasn’t able to finish any topic before exams, but my teacher was detailed. My teacher theorized every drug so well. And so Daunorubicin, which I remember today, fetched me the same grade as my friend, even though I toiled diligently for it.
I am not trying to measure my knowledge here. Or the fact that I deliver less memorizable lectures. I want to abate my anxiety that people around me think that I am not up to the mark. Why do they say so?
I should not fool myself with what people say. What is necessary is to stay with my style of delivery of knowledge, even though it’s funny for them. Otherwise I’ll lose my way. I won’t be good at rendering points nor explaining well. So as far as I can do justice to my subject, at least I’ll explain well.
Am I really done with theorizing?
I don’t think no. This is my uniqueness, let it continue as it is, and let the other brilliant ones continue imparting important points from the examination perspective.
As it is said,
“The best practice is inspired by theory.” ~ Donald Knuth
I have been struggling with my mind quite a bit for the past few years, refuting so many theories that I need to get right, at some places I was right also.
Therefore,
“Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.” ~ Karl Popper
When I began in India, I called it trepanation only to feel abashed and discover by reading books that it is called burr hole surgery.
I kept thinking it is end-to-side anastomosis only to find out that it’s a Roux-en-Y.
Voices will not shut up in my sleep. What needs to be done is fight with all my might to bring in a little structure in my teachings and not give up on theorizing.
Now I feel better!!
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